Quotes from James Harvey Robinson

Political campaigns are designedly made into emotional orgies which endeavor to distract attention from the real issues involved, and they actually paralyze what slight powers of cerebration man can normally muster.

American life is a powerful solvent. It seems to neutralise every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good-will, complacency thoughtlessness, and optimism.

We are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find ourselves filled with an illicit passion for them when anyone proposes to rob us of their companionship. It is obviously not the ideas themselves that are dear to us, but our self-esteem, which is threatened.

The truth that no abrupt change has ever taken place in all the customs of a people, and that it cannot, in the nature of things, take place, is perhaps the most fundamental lesson that history teaches.

Woe to our time, for the study of letters has perished from among us.

Greatness, in the last analysis, is largely bravery - courage in escaping from old ideas and old standards and respectable ways of doing things.

In its amplest meaning History includes every trace and vestige of everything that man has done or thought since first he appeared on the earth.

Man has long found solace in good talk to offset bad conduct.

Speech gave man a unique power to lead a double life, he could say one thing and do another.

History ... may be regarded as an artificial extension and : broadening of our memories and may be used to overcome the natural bewilderment of all unfamiliar situations.

We are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find ourselves filled with an illicit passion for them when anyone proposed to rob us of their companionship.

Mere lack of success does not discredit a method, for there are many things that determine and perpetuate our sanctified ways of doing things besides their success in reaching their proposed ends.

Curiosity is idle only to those who fail to realize that it may be a very rare and indispensable thing.

There are pastors who won't go to people's sick beds. How can people of God turn their back on the sick, poor and hungry?

Partisanship is our great curse. We too readily assume that everything has two sides and that it is our duty to be on one or the other.

Greatness, in the last analysis, is largely bravery-courage in escaping from old ideas and old standards.

We find it hard to believe that other people's thoughts are as silly as our own, but they probably are.

Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.

Greatness, in the last analysis, is largely bravery - courage in escaping from old ideas and old standards and respectable ways of doing things.

I am opposed to censorship. Censors are pretty sure fools. I have no confidence in the suppression of everyday facts.

Our goal, simply stated, is to be the best.